The Image of the Harp and Trecento Reception of Plato's Phaedo

Until recently, “Platonism” as a concept had been fairly well-established: in all likelihood nothing new would come out of looking carefully into the early translations of Plato’s dialogues. Generally, it was thought that all of the dialogues — with the exception of Plato's Timaeus, available in Chalcidius’ partial translation and extensive commentary, and, for example, also in the subsequent twelfth-century commentary by William of Conches — were translated from Greek into Latin and hence were influential only in the course of the fifteenth century, particularly due to the efforts of the Florentine humanist, Marsilio Ficino.